Jungle By-Ways in India 



had crossed out of the last beat unseen, had not 

 waited in the last bit of jungle which was now 

 to be beaten, but had gone straight through it 

 and got well out of harm's way. 



Are leopards becoming scarcer or more numer- 

 ous in the country ? It is a question I have often 

 heard mooted, and the answers one hears are 

 always directly antagonistic to one another. My 

 own opinion, an opinion held by many, I believe, 

 is that the ' pard ' is just as numerous as hereto- 

 fore, but that he now does not usually hang about 

 civil stations or military cantonments to the ex- 

 tent he formerly did. He has learnt, as most 

 other animals are learning, the nature and power 

 of the modern rifle, and the fact that it is more 

 numerous in the vicinity of the abodes of the 

 sahibs. In stations where formerly it was quite 

 a common occurrence to shoot leopards in the 

 station, where they prowled about in the hopes 

 of taking off that greatest delicacy, the white dog 

 of the sahib, you will find them nowadays only as 

 a rare occurrence, and then their cunning is some- 

 thing ' wicked ' from the point of view of their 

 would-be slayer. 



The other day it had been noticed that a 

 leopard had been prowling about a house, with 

 the obvious hope of sooner or later getting a dog. 

 Why the dog is such an idiot as to dash out and 

 bark at a leopard, as they all invariably will, 

 when one would think that instinct ought to tell 



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